Yasushi Inoue Nominated for Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969

The novelist Yasushi Inoue, who is known for having left many historical novels etc. on the Silk Road, was apparently the first candidate in the 1969 Nobel Prize for Literature, the year after Yasunari Kawabata was awarded. became.

The Nobel Prize in Literature Prize will be disclosed by the Swedish Academy in response to a request for information disclosure 50 years later, and the minutes of the 1969 selection, the year after Kawabata's first Japanese award, will be released on the 2nd. it was done.

According to this, there were 103 candidates for this year, including the name of novelist Yasushi Inoue, and it turned out that this was the first candidate of the year.

Inoue had been recommended by a German literary researcher, but in the minutes of the meeting, he said, "We will not investigate this candidate because it is unlikely that we will give a new prize to Japan." This indicates that the situation was not discussed again the next year after Kawabata regarding the award to a Japanese artist.

Yasushi Inoue was known for having left many historical novels on the Silk Road, and by this time in Japan, he had published masterpieces such as Asunaro Monogatari, Ice Wall, and Dunhuang.

The only Japanese that appeared in the minutes of this year was Inoue, and there was no name for Yukio Mishima, who had been highly evaluated for being the final candidate in 1963 and 1967. This year's Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Samuel Beckett, a playwright from Ireland.

Experts: "The candidate's rumor was backed up"

Associate Professor Shunichiro Akikusa of Nihon University Graduate School, who is examining the history of the selection of the Nobel Prize for Literature, said, The material proved for the first time that he was a candidate: Inoue's work began to be translated into English in the late 1950s, and into the 60s, translations into European languages ​​such as Italian and German increased. Then, in the 1980s, he was vice president of the International Pen Club, a world-class literary organization, and it is interesting to see how the Academy's reputation for Inoue has changed since then. " You.